Violations Taint MSA Elections

by Matthew S. Schwartz and R. Colin Painter

"If the truth is that someone did something wrong, it’s your job to report it." So said Josh Trapani, an Independent candidate who won reelection to the Michigan Student Assembly in the fall 1998 elections. Indeed, questions have come to light concerning alleged violations of the MSA Election Code by certain candidates, as well as the slipshod manner in which the MSA election board may have handled these allegations.

Many students recently inundated the Michigan Review’s e-mail inbox with allegations that the election board (the group designated to deal with candidate violations and levy penalties) failed to appropriately reprimand some candidates who violated sections of the Election Code during the fall 1998 MSA elections. Had these violations been counted, the students say, at least one elected Students’ Party candidate would have been disqualified from the race.

A great number of concerned candidates and independent observers formally reported alleged violations to the election board via e-mail in the week leading up to the election. These charges were filed against Kym Stewart and Jennifer VanRoeyen of the Students’ Party. Charges were also filed against the Students’ Party itself.

The candidates in question allegedly violated sections 41.551, 41.561, and 41.66 of the Code (see bottom of page). The Code deems that each of these violations earns a candidate one "demerit." After five demerits, a candidate is disqualified. The final list of demerits shows that the election board issued no more than four demerits to any candidate, and thus issued no disqualifications.

The students reporting the violations claim that Stewart’s actions should have garnered a total of six demerits, disqualifying her from the race. In an interview, Stewart defended her actions, saying that as a freshman she is new to the political arena and many of the rules were unclear to her, and that her great plans for MSA should have been taken into consideration as the election board reviewed her violations. Later, however, she reversed herself, saying that "ignorance was not an excuse at all; first year there is no trial period, you know?"

She went on to say that "[I] would never do anything out of malice, and once everything was brought to my attention, it was rectified immediately." But she later admitted that it took her several days to find many of the offending posters and rectify her errors. When Stewart was asked whether she thought the election board was fair in issuing her four demerits (one short of forcing her out of her seat), she said that "I think they did an excellent job. … I personally will say that the election board did nothing wrong."

"Each incident was investigated by a member of the [election] board, without exception, as soon as possible after notice was received," said MSA Rules and Elections Chair Andrew Serowik in an e-mail. "The standard set by the election board was to assign demerits only in cases where an election board member observed the violation themselves, or [where] substantial proof of a violation existed." Regarding the specific violations in question, members of the election board said that there was no proof that the violations had actually occurred.

For instance, two candidates and an independent observer each individually e-mailed the election board on Nov. 16 and 17 to report Stewart’s violation of section 41.561 of the Code. They alleged that she had placed a poster on a painted lamppost next to the Harlan Hatcher Graduate Library. Each person filing a report included a description of where the violation was located, some very detailed: Jacob Oslick of the New Frontier Party wrote that "the lamppost can be found near the Grad Library, just outside of the Diag area, on the side of the sidewalk bordered by grass (opposite the side of the sidewalk bordered by the Grad Library)"; another candidate wrote that the lamppost was located "on the southeast side corner of the Diag."

[Note: Jacob Oslick, currently the national affairs editor of the Review, resigned from, and no longer maintains any official ties with, the New Frontier Party.]

Fall 1998 Election Director Alex Hovan responded to Oslick via e-mail on Nov. 18, a full two days after the violation was first reported, stating that "[I] searched for, but did not find, the Kym Stewart poster on the light post near Rackham [of] which I had received several complaints." However, had Hovan or any other member of the election board responded sooner, the observers say they would have had the opportunity to physically show Hovan exactly where the violation was taking place.

Art and Architecture junior Elizabeth Keslacy thinks that Hovan was merely unable to find the poster in question. "The elections people supposedly checked on it, but said they could not find it," she said. "New Frontier Party candidates [subsequently] found it, still in its original position on the lamppost." Of course, as indicated above, the offending poster was not located near Rackham at all, but rather outside of the Harlan Hatcher Graduate Library.

Serowik recalled that the poster in question was indeed alleged to have been located near the Graduate Library. And "eventually we looked there," he said. However, he continued, "there was nothing there, and … the number of e-mails we were receiving, especially about Kym [Stewart], was getting to be a little bit obscene." Asked to clarify what he meant by "obscene," Serowik explained that "we were starting to get the impression that some of these [allegations] may not have been completely good-faith allegations against [Stewart] … I mean we did investigate all of them and we did look for [the alleged violations], but we never found anything."

After claiming that the poster was not there, Hovan’s Nov. 18 letter to Oslick then cautioned that "falsely reporting campaign offenses is also against the rules, subject to three demerits." Did the election board believe that those reporting the violations were lying? "I really don’t know," said Serowik. "Whether I did or not is really not relevant."

One confusing aspect of the Election Code is the vague way in which demerits are distributed. For example, if the election board finds several offending posters near one another, they are generally considered to be one offense, said MSA representative Sumeet Karnik.

Stewart agreed with this logic, claiming that being punished for all of her mistakes "would be ludicrous, because if I had ten [illegal] posters up [in the same place] then I’m automatically out for one mistake." When asked whether she committed all of the alleged offenses, she took full responsibility for them; however, she defended her actions by saying they were all related crimes and should be counted together instead of separately. "I’m sure [the students who reported the violations] just probably made multiple reports because … they saw multiple things, even though it was the same thing."

But what happens if many different observers spot the same types of violations by one candidate in several different place around campus? According to Serowik, the fact that they were the same type of violation was taken into consideration when demerits were issued. "Our general rule was to give a demerit per offense," Serowik explained. "If those flyers that were still up constituted the same [type of] offense, then we would generally take that into consideration and not necessarily give more demerits" as long as the candidates seemed to be making a good-faith effort to correct the violations.

Serowik agreed that it was not fair for some candidates to violate the rules and not receive demerits while others ran a fair campaign all along. However, the system is set up so that someone on the election board must see the violation in question in order to punish candidates. "The only kind of violations that we could really give out demerits for were ones that we actually [saw] or had substantial proof that there was a violation," he said.

In certain instances, observers reported violations to the election board, but by the time members of the board arrived at the site in question, the posters in violation had been removed. "The problem," said Keslacy, "lies in the timeliness of [the election board’s] response."

In one instance, two observers witnessed multiple violations of sections 41.551 and 41.561 by Jennifer VanRoeyen of the Students’ Party. The separately emailed the election board informing them of the violations – all of them on North Campus – which included multiple posters on glass in the EECS Atrium; multiple signs on painted walls in a stairway and at the west entrance of the Dow building; and no inclusion of the required "paid for by" information.

VanRoeyen denied most of the allegations, and claimed that only two of her posters lacked the "paid for by" information. "I never did anything illegal, intentionally," she said, although she admitted that "it’s possible" she might have inadvertently broken the rules.

Michael Austin, a New Frontier Party candidate, said that VanRoeyen’s posters were "clearly in violation but stayed up less than a day, and thus were not counted."

[Note: Michael Austin is a staff writer for the Review.]

"If somebody puts up posters illegally and then realizes they are illegal and takes them down before we see them, we can’t give them demerits without some kind of reasonable proof [that they were there]," Serowik said. He went on to suggest that if candidates feared that violations they had observed would be corrected before the election board could verify them, "and they really felt that this person should be given demerits," they should do something to prove the violation. "Bring an election board member directly there, take a photograph, I mean whatever it takes," he said. Of course, as noted earlier, the election board did not respond to candidates about their inability to find the alleged violations until days later, if at all. Thus, observers had no way of knowing their reports went unrecorded.

As the controversy over VanRoeyen’s violations shows, another problem the election board faces is making timely evaluations of alleged violations in remote locations such as North Campus. Austin felt that the election board "seemed reluctant to go all the way up to North Campus."

According to Serowik, it was inconvenient for members of the election board to travel to North Campus, because "with the people that we had," he said, "none of them really had very regular classes on North Campus." He then added, "but that’s not a reason not to check them." When asked if every reported North Campus violation was checked within a couple of hours, Serowik maintained that "that’s probably true."

Some candidates feel that the election board becomes more reluctant to issue demerits as a candidate approaches disqualification. Was the election board reluctant to give that fifth demerit? "I wouldn’t say that that’s necessarily true," said Serowik. "We didn’t disqualify anyone in this election, [but] there were people who were disqualified in the last election. … We would obviously not like to see people disqualified, but we have no problem doing it if they have violated the rules."

Joe Bernstein, MSA Communications Chair and former election board member, believes otherwise. "You look at the fifth demerit with much more scrutiny," he said. "Everybody’s reluctant to disqualify people."

In light of the problems surrounding enforcement of the Election Code, some may ask this question: if election rules are not consistently applied to all candidates, and to all instances of possible violations, is a fair election truly possible?

"It is hard to say whether or not the election directors were indeed running things fairly," said Keslacy. "A lot of violations [slipped] through the cracks and [were] never counted. … I believe that Kym Stewart had more than enough violations to have her disqualified, but because Alex Hovan and his underlings were slow and unable to find them, she remained."

A current MSA representative, who wished to remain anonymous, claims that "people like Kym Stewart, Jen VanRoeyen, and the entire DAAP violated the hell out of the election rules."

Mark Sherer, fall 1998 election board member, questioned the motives behind the recent barrage of complaints. "Are they really doing that because they think there’s been a miscarriage of justice, or are they doing it because they’re bitter?"

Keslacy stated that "a general acceptance of these rules by the different parties was an integral part of having a fair election. Many [candidates] seemed not to think so."

MSA President Trent Thompson acknowledged that when true violations go unpunished, "no, it’s not fair." But he pointed out that without hard proof that a violation actually existed, it would not be fair to punish a candidate who had been falsely accused. "In both ways, it’s not fair. So you have to find a way that you can try to base it on evidence, on what the election board has actually seen. … That’s the best way to do it." MR

This article was published in the 20 January 1999 edition of The Michigan Review (Volume 17, Number 6).
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